A teenage girl is looking at me with tears forming in her eyes. She is struggling to find the words to ask me a question. “I don’t know where to start,” she says.

I invite her to say the first thing on her mind. “Gaza,” she says quietly. Just one word, Gaza.

Stan Grant delivers the Centre for Public Christianity’s Richard Johnson Lecture in Chatswood on Wednesday night. 

She can barely contain herself. Through her tears she tells me that the slaughter of people in Gaza, the starvation, the homelessness and suffering of children, triggers a reminder of what happened in Australia to her Aboriginal ancestors.

For this young woman – I will call her “Kate” – the war in Gaza has merged with Australian history to overpower her with hopelessness and despair. She descends into a very modern malaise. It is the suffering, the trauma, that speaks to her, not the people who are suffering, but the very act of suffering itself. It becomes clear to me that for her suffering is a life force.

It is heartbreaking to watch. Especially when the reason I am here at an Indigenous Catholic conference is to talk about faith, about God, love, truth, beauty and forgiveness. Kate should be full of the possibilities of life. She should be introduced to music, art, poetry, philosophy. Her life should be one of adventure and learning grounded in her culture and her faith.

How sad ... Kate is programmed for bitterness.

Instead, Kate is consumed by politics and identity. History runs like poison through her blood. She sees her existence through victimhood........

© The Age